Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Went to Ubin today, and even before we got onto the boat at Changi village, we were quite lucky to see a pair of oriental pied hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris)!

According to "An Annotated Checklist of the Birds of Singapore" by Wang, L. K. and Hails, C. J., the oriental pied hornbill was last recorded formally in 1885, and probably have gone extinct in the 1920s in Singapore. After which, it was still sighted several times in the Seletar and Changi areas, but these were presumed to be wildlife trade escapees or free-flyers from the Zoo. The first recorded sighting from Pulau Ubin was in 1994. These birds are likely to have flown over from Johor, and managed to settle down. Breeding was first recorded in 1997 on Pulau Ubin. There were records of breeding in Seletar too.

Anyway, back to the oriental pied hornbills I saw in Changi Village, and here's how the story goes...

Female Hornbill: Gluurrppp....Male Hornbill: Alamak... look at the way she eats! The wing of the insect still stuck at the side of the mouth... So disgusting... I better fly off in case others start associating me with her...

Female Hornbill: Ah... satisfying meal... Hey?!?! Where did he go?

Male Hornbill: Here lah! Quickly fly over here to hide. So malu...

Haha... No offends to the hornbill lovers, but thought it was kind of cute to see hornbill courtship in action.

Anyway, even when we were on Ubin, we saw at least 3 other hornbills! Here's one of my favourite shots today...

Pink-necked green pigeons are rather common in Singapore, but this is the first time I managed to get a decent shot of them as the ones I've seen previous were just too high up on the branches for my miserable camera with little zoom to get good shots :P

Certainly a happy day for me to have managed to get some decent shots of these beautiful birds.